DeQuincy Mayor Riley Smith announced Thursday, Jan. 9, that DeQuincy Industrial Park is now officially a certified site.
City Hall along with The Alliance will have a small ceremony at City Hall on Wednesday, Jan. 15 at 3 p.m. to make a formal announcement of this certified site.
The city-owned 50-acre Industrial Park, located next to the airport, earned designation as an official Certified Site under LED’s Site Certification Program. The City hopes this designation will help attract new tenants to the Industrial Park, which is zoned for light industrial or commercial use.
“Our goal is to entice new tenants to this site which will spur economic growth and more local jobs,” said Mayor Smith. “We want to kickstart more activity in that area which should, in turn, serve our community well into the future.”
The Industrial Park in DeQuincy is the 11th certified site in Southwest Louisiana and the eighth in Calcasieu Parish.
“The DeQuincy area is ripe for this type of site development,” said Gus Fontenot, Project Coordinator for the Southwest Louisiana Economic Development Alliance. “A ‘shovel-ready’ certified site is an asset that can hopefully lure the kind of activity that will bring new jobs and opportunities to the DeQuincy area,” added Fontenot.
LED administers the Site Certification Program which promotes sites that are ‘shovel ready’ for businesses to build or locate. Since 2012, the state’s Site Certification Program has incentivized land owners to get property certified by offering to pay up to 75 percent of the costs associated with the due diligence process. That process includes environmental inspection, elevation surveys, archaeological investigations, a wetlands delineation, and much more in-depth documentation, analysis, and background work. The remaining 25 percent of the costs are covered by the landowner or others.
For more information about Southwest Louisiana’s Site Certification Program, contact Gus Fontenot at The Alliance 337-433-3632 or email gfontenot@allianceswla.org.
